Update 1.0.2.3. – Patch Notes

Summary

This update makes Destiny a more stable experience for all players. We’re also changing the player experience in the Raid to ensure that the activity provides an endgame challenge that meets project goals for the intended level of difficulty.

General

Fixed an issue in which multiple errors reported with Zebra error codes

Errors previously reporting as Zebra will now display as their own separate codes

Fixed a rare issue related to being Kicked To Login repeatedly

Fixed a rare issue that resulted in a Kick To Orbit reported with the Cockatoo error code

Servers

Fixed an issue where some players would occasionally be erroneously kicked at the beginning of an activity due to a server error

Increased protection against account corruption

Raid

Fixed an issue where Atheon was not choosing random targets for teleport through the timestream during the final encounter on the Vault of Glass

Fixed an exploit where Atheon could be forced off his platform

More updates are to follow as we continue to support Destiny. Future enhancements being worked on include Exotic Weapon tuning, new features for voice communication between matchmade teammates, and the ability to hold more Bounties in your pocket at any time.

From Deej:

So, the update just went live. Atheon can no longer be pushed off his platform. He’ll also select people at random to be thrown across time. He’s a real bastard, eh?

I talked a lot to the developers about your opinions on the matter. You don’t want to be selected at random. You want to choose who gets to fetch the relic under fire from nasty Oracles. I spoke on your behalf. Your voice was heard. We discussed your concerns.

I even said “Why not just change Hard Mode and leave Easy Mode alone?”

I was told “The Raid is never supposed to be easy.”

At that point, I recalled all the times I stood and delivered the line “…the most challenging encounter we’ve ever created.” It was hard to disagree. As a veteran of Cairo Station on Legendary in Halo, I had to admit that I had been carried through the Raid like luggage assigned to my clan. I did my own carrying later, but carrying had been done.

This is an activity that was designed to be undertaken by a hardcore team that was ready and willing to adapt and improvise to changing battle conditions. Like the moment when the Templar shields random players, the Final Boss was supposed to be extremely dangerous. While we’ve been working on some of the other things for which you’ve been asking (i.e. better exotics, voice chat in matchmaking, more bounties), the designers who made the Raid have plugged the holes that you showed them.

If you got in on the ground floor of this thing, we thank you. If you understand the mechanics for how to beat Atheon, it’s still a thing you can teach your friends. If you’re all up to the challenge, the Raid is waiting for you.

The random teleporting “fix” is honestly the only thing Bungie has done that truly makes me upset.

Whether it was a bug or not, it’s not how the “rules” worked from day one so teams bonded and strategized over how it worked. Now they just go and change it and say “well we really didn’t intend for people to learn and play roles well, we want everyone to be the quarterback, running back, wide receiver, tackle, etc.”

It’s so counter intuitive. If anything that should be a random modifier that the players can choose with a chance to gain better loot if they beat it with it on or something.

John Winklepleck

Yes its annoying but I like the new change and alot of my friends do too…..it allows us to sharpen our teamwork and ourselves. When random people get hit it will take a good team of players to reorganize in the heat of the fight…..its takes good communication and a well balanced team to do it…..

echelon

We completed last night with the “fix”. Honestly it was basically pointless. Sure a few more guys had to learn to use the relic or whatever and we eventually got it done, but at this point it was a really bad move by Bungie. It only artificially lengthened our playthrough.

It’s the principle and spirit of the thing that bothers me. If the instance had been random from the get go, then nobody would complain. For them to claim it was a bug and “fix” it at this point is really stupid. Even if it was a legit bug they gained absolutely nothing by fixing it.

Instead we also had our playthrough “lengthened” by several other legitimate bugs that they obviously felt were much lower priority than the teleport issue. Namely, 3 times the relic holder glitched when they went through the portal, once 4 people were randomly teleported, once 2 people were teleported, 3 times the cleanse shield randomly disappeared even though there was plenty of juice left on it, twice Atheon’s bolts went through the shield, once the relic holder was pushed forward, magically off the middle platform while holding the shield and twice invisible oracles wiped us…

It’d be nice if they fixed real bugs and made this a hardcore modifier option or something…

Paratrooper2000

For the majority of people (including myself) it will be much harder to finish the raid. But bug-fixing is fine for me.

Dragonborn399

Exactly!

Lezlow

Ummm they changed the last part. So if your teaching new people and someone messes up it wipes…. Right back to the beginning of the same boss. So hard to learn I know…..

So, the update just went live. Atheon can no longer be pushed off his platform. He’ll also select people at random to be thrown across time. He’s a real bastard, eh?

I talked a lot to the developers about your opinions on the matter. You don’t want to be selected at random. You want to choose who gets to fetch the relic under fire from nasty Oracles. I spoke on your behalf. Your voice was heard. We discussed your concerns.

I even said “Why not just change Hard Mode and leave Easy Mode alone?”

I was told “The Raid is never supposed to be easy.”

At that point, I recalled all the times I stood and delivered the line “…the most challenging encounter we’ve ever created.” It was hard to disagree. As a veteran of Cairo Station on Legendary in Halo, I had to admit that I had been carried through the Raid like luggage assigned to my clan. I did my own carrying later, but carrying had been done.

This is an activity that was designed to be undertaken by a hardcore team that was ready and willing to adapt and improvise to changing battle conditions. Like the moment when the Templar shields random players, the Final Boss was supposed to be extremely dangerous. While we’ve been working on some of the other things for which you’ve been asking (i.e. better exotics, voice chat in matchmaking, more bounties), the designers who made the Raid have plugged the holes that you showed them.

If you got in on the ground floor of this thing, we thank you. If you understand the mechanics for how to beat Atheon, it’s still a thing you can teach your friends. If you’re all up to the challenge, the Raid is waiting for you.

Spiggs

What a joke, yea the teleport was by far the most important item to fix (sarcasm)……I get the Atheon cheese, but that’s what gamers do, they find a weakness and exploit it. The teleport “bug” is a joke, god forbid if teams build strategies. Why not ad match making to the VOG, whats the difference at this point? Bungies aim is to quell teamwork. Lets not mention the all the bugs that make doing the raid difficult to begin with. I’ve played matches where time of vengeance got skipped all together, Pretorians re-gening health during teleport. Concentrate on fixing that!

Raxs

Just face it… it was broken. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Instead of riding off the backs of glitches just do the Raid properly and put in some effort. God forbid you know have to put in the effort to adapt to the raid. If it does exactly what you expect it to do it wont be challenging. Embrace the fact the game is now more challenging.

Jason David Anderson

Sorry, but if you’re telling me that Atheon teleporting the 3 furthest people was a glitch – then you’re telling me Bungie are totally incompetent and don’t know how to play test, program, or develope games.

I’d like to believe the other – which is equally frustrating – they lied to us and did this to artificially lengthen the game.

I’m really left wondering how anyone can believe that Atheon “wasn’t working as intended” – Bungie play tested the shit out of this game, they’re accomplished programmers, developers, designers, and all around well rounded game makers. There is no way this Atheon mechanic went overlooked – the programmers have to deliberately set up code to choose the 3 furthest players instead of inserting random players.

DeeJ fucking admits it in his statement, the shields with the Templar are random – so Bungie know damn well how to program random debuffs onto players. Teleporting some one is no different.

Lezlow

You know its very hard to test EVERY scenario when testing code. They probably did test it with people all over the map and it probably seemed to work. Considering how the shields popped up on 3 random people during the Gatekeeper it makes sense that it was supposed to be 3 random people at Atheon. Quite trying to find reasons to hate the game. Just stop playing it if it bothers you this much.

Raxs

Exactly. Thank you.

Jason David Anderson

I sincerely doubt the play testers didn’t notice that it teleports the 3 furthest people away – considering it’s the only way that players beat Atheon on normal, let alone hard mode – and that those players are superior gamers to Bungie’s team.

Sorry, but that makes no sense – they had to have known Atheon teleports the 3 furthest players. Again, they’re calling something a glitch when it isn’t.

They’re dumping time into fixing a boss that isn’t broken – when there are glitches and bugs littering the game.

They are taking time to fix a boss that less than 30% of the total Destiny population will ever attempt, instead of fixing bugs and glitches that plague a much larger majority.

They are taking time to fix a boss that isn’t broken, when the boss will be an after thought in a month with the release of the next DLC.

I don’t know why more people aren’t miffed about how they’re handling what is supposed to be their legacy over the next 10 years – but it’s whatever – I’m invested heavily into this game, and stupid shit like this sucks.

Lezlow

You have no idea what is a bug or isn’t. Or even how they intended the raid to be. The raid is supposed to be a hard team work based mode. Everyone should know how to do everything. Its not that hard to learn. If you want to go solo and carry people COD comes out soon. Me, I like the challenge and I trust that Bungie is in fact fixing a bug. It makes a lot of sense if you look at how the rest of the raid was built.

Jason David Anderson

What the hell does Call of Duty have to do with any of this? Are you one of those high school kids that measures success and image around what company you identify with?

Raxs

There are millions, literally millions of things that could go wrong in Destiny, you can’t expect them to notice everything. Bungie would have test played the VOG a good few times, maybe 50 from start to finish. It took the community thousands and thousands of attempts to first notice the glitch. So why would bungie notice it in 50? Nothing in programming is “random” you can’t just tell a computer “Pick any one you like” because a computer can’t figure it out. A Random generator can be a very complex system which can sometimes malfunction if not code immaculately. There is always, always a pattern and algorithm. It’s just most of them can’t be figured out in a life-time. Bungie’s one fell apart and it seemingly worked at the time. It wasn’t intentional. Why would Bungie make it pick the 3 furthest on purpose? That makes no sense… It would at least make sense to have the 3 closest. Yes, they know how to make RNG, it’s all over the game, but sometimes we make mistakes we don’t notice. You can assemble a million sandwiches, but we as humans would likely make a mistake somewhere along the lines, bungie did this with the RNG.

I don’t remember Bungie every lying about anything. They can’t, because that’s fraud and is a legitimate legal infringement if developer lie to consumers, which they didn’t do because they would have been screwed over by lawsuits by now. You lied to yourself by making assumptions about the games content. Activision wanted to extend the DLC content by removing 3 or 4 missions from the game. Which to be honest makes no difference because nobody cared for destinies story anyway (so it seems), it’s not like 4 missions would change that. They didn’t remove Raids or Strikes because those where all cued for the DLCs anyway. Majour content was never removed, just the “terrible” story missions nobody cared about. The gaming community is just like a bunch of babies. They will whine and bitch about the terrible missions they play, yet the moment you take some away they kick and scream like little idiots. Don’t be another one of these people, please, we have enough of them already.

If the game annoys you even slightly, why play it? Or even care about it for that matter? Games are supposed to entertain us and make us feel good and accomplished. If it just pissed you off you’d be an idiot to even bother playing ever again. The only logical thing as a human being you can possibly do is just stop playing. You owe the game nothing and it owes you nothing. A simple scheme. When I reach LV 30, I’m gone. When the DLCs come out, I’ll come back, play those, then leave again. I’m not wasting my time on a game that doesn’t need to be played. People feel obligated to and they shouldn’t. Don’t like it, don’t play it (:

Jason David Anderson

“There are millions, literally millions of things that could go wrong in Destiny, you can’t expect them to notice everything. Bungie would have test played the VOG a good few times, maybe 50 from start to finish. It took the community thousands and thousands of attempts to first notice the glitch. So why would bungie notice it in 50? Nothing in programming is “random” you can’t just tell a computer “Pick any one you like” because a computer can’t figure it out. A Random generator can be a very complex system which can sometimes malfunction if not code immaculately. There is always, always a pattern and algorithm. It’s just most of them can’t be figured out in a life-time. Bungie’s one fell apart and it seemingly worked at the time. It wasn’t intentional. Why would Bungie make it pick the 3 furthest on purpose? That makes no sense… It would at least make sense to have the 3 closest. Yes, they know how to make RNG, it’s all over the game, but sometimes we make mistakes we don’t notice. You can assemble a million sandwiches, but we as humans would likely make a mistake somewhere along the lines, bungie did this with the RNG.”

It is specifically programmed code to have Atheon teleport the 3 furthest people from him – if they were able to create a random generator for the shields on the Templar, why not just implement the exact same code for Atheon for the teleport system? Because it wasn’t the originally intended method, the designers were very explicit when they made code stating that Atheon teleport the 3 furthest people.

As for play testing – I’m going to take a guess and say that the Bungie team play testing Atheon actually BEAT him multiple times. It did not take people “thousands” of playthroughs to realize that Atheon teleported the 3 furthest away, the first team to beat the raid figured it out in 2 hours after getting to Atheon.

I don’t know where you pulled the number 50 from for how many times they play tested the raid, but if that’s all they put into it, it’s their own fault for half assing it – assuming they did not recognize that Atheon teleports the 3 furthest away – but something tells me they did, because it’s basically the strategy that was used to defeat Atheon for the first time by real players, players that are much better than Bungie play testers.

How does picking the 3 closest make any more sense than picking the 3 furthest away? Arguments could be made for both. Either way, the code is there, and it’s intentional – telling us it’s a glitch is a lie.

“I don’t remember Bungie every lying about anything. They can’t, because that’s fraud and is a legitimate legal infringement if developer lie to consumers, which they didn’t do because they would have been screwed over by lawsuits by now. You lied to yourself by making assumptions about the games content. Activision wanted to extend the DLC content by removing 3 or 4 missions from the game.”

Bungie’s PR team made several claims about the game that are not even close to the end result – why you would even defend this is beyond me. Go watch the vidocs about the game prior to release – then tell me what they discuss there is even remotely close to what the end result was.

I made zero assumptions about this game before it’s release, I didn’t even know the game existed up until the demo on the PS4 was out – and after playing it I did nothing but pre order the game, I did not read anything further about it. I went in with no preconceived notions – after the fact, after buying it and playing it, I started to research it – and came to the realizations I now have.

Where is there proof that Activision removed 3 or 4 missions for DLC? You’re making your own assumptions there, something you seem to be against a few sentences prior. Terrible story missions nobody cared about? I care about 3 or 4 missions that weren’t included, especially if they attribute more to the sparse story given.

“The gaming community is just like a bunch of babies. They will whine and bitch about the terrible missions they play, yet the moment you take some away they kick and scream like little idiots. Don’t be another one of these people, please, we have enough of them already.”

People have a right to criticize something they’ve paid for – just like you have the right to be an apologist for Bungie. Personally I think it’s better to hold a company accountable for it’s fuck ups, so that we get better content in the long run, than just let them fly by the seat of their pants and do whatever they want.

“If the game annoys you even slightly, why play it? Or even care about it for that matter? Games are supposed to entertain us and make us feel good and accomplished. If it just pissed you off you’d be an idiot to even bother playing ever again. The only logical thing as a human being you can possibly do is just stop playing. You owe the game nothing and it owes you nothing. A simple scheme. When I reach LV 30, I’m gone. When the DLCs come out, I’ll come back, play those, then leave again. I’m not wasting my time on a game that doesn’t need to be played. People feel obligated to and they shouldn’t. Don’t like it, don’t play it (:”

I invested $80 of my money into this game, that’s why I play it. I enjoy the PvE mechanics of the game, the shooting is superb. The bugs, glitches, and lack of story aren’t what piss me off – Bungie is what pisses me off, with how they choose to go about fixing them. They are paying more attention to a raid mechanic that isn’t broken than they are to legitimate bugs and glitches that literally break the game. Less than 30% of the Destiny population even plays the raid content, so why? Why are they insulting everyone by diverting important resources to an end boss that less than 30% of the player base will ever attempt, that will be an afterthought a month from now when the next DLC is released, and that wasn’t even broken to begin with?

What you say is opinion – it’s how you see fit to play the game.

I’m Disabled, I don’t have much of a choice in what I do all day – I’m relegated to a chair for the rest of my life because I almost lost my leg in Afghanistan – how I see fit to spend my time is my own business, and gaming is a large part of it. It is not your place, nor your right to tell me whether I can or cannot play a game – nor whether I should or should not play it.

As I said before, I want Destiny to succeed – I love the game, I love the universe, I love most everything about the idea of it.

I cannot stand what Bungie is doing to it – and I’m getting really tired of apologists for Bungie coming back at me with totally left field counter arguments that make little to no sense, just to try and cover up how bad of a job Bungie are doing at maintaining what is supposed to be their legacy for the next 10 years.

Lezlow

I’m sorry. I am around code all day and I tried to help you but I guess the old saying stays true. You cant change a stubborn moron. Keep believing Bungie is purposely screwing over their customers that pay them just to piss them off. I hope you just rage quit soon so your crying and your know all attitude can go play some candy crush or something.

Jason David Anderson

Really, around code all day? What language do you program in? What OS does your company run? What’s your position at the company and company name?

I worked for ToneSoft doing Unix Database Programming and QA on SQL programs that run PBX Phone Systems. I know quite a bit about programming – before I decided to move into medicine it’s what I did for a living.

I’m curious what you do for a living, it’s beyond illogical to say that what Atheon original did was not intended – you have to code it specifically to pull people from the furthest location.

In reality I think you’re some high school kid, honestly. With your Call of Duty insults, and calling me a moron. The ad hominem attacks aren’t needed.

Raxs

Please, learn to quote things properly or don’t do it at all. There is no need to repost an entire comment to reply to it. I wrote it, I know what you are talking about. It’s not worth covering up a whole page.

Wait, what? Why not use the same code? Sorry, but you have no clue about Games development at all and have definitely never programmed anything. You get annoyed at Bungie for making a tacky game and then say they should recycle random chunks of code. How can you expect that to not create problems? I wouldn’t be surprised if that is actually what they did and it didn’t work properly.

50 is a hypothetical value. It just represents the phrase “a Good few times”.

And yes, they took stuff out. That’s what I said. They planned to add things that ended up being removed. That’s not lying at all. And 3-4 missions isn’t an assumption. The players have located 3-4 missions in the game that where removed. That’s evidence. Bungie confirmed that they where removed.

Yes, you might be bothered that it was removed, but you are not most people. I think even you understand that people would hate the game the exact same amount had they left those missions in.

The whole of Bungie isn’t working on the raid. If you truly did watch the Vdocs, you’d know that the Vault of glass team is only 6 people. They are the only ones fixing it. Not all of the Bungie. The other 296 employees are working on the other things in the game. The Story isn’t really that bad, you just have to pay a lot more attention to details that initiate other tangents. The story isn’t finished. That’s why it seems bad, it’s a 10 year project. If they finished the story people would just stop playing. The rest of the story is housed by DLC content.

I’m not defending the game. I’m giving you the facts about the way it was developed. The thing that bothers me is when people make assumptions about game design. I’m not bothered you think it’s bad, I see why and agree with you on many levels. Bungie doesn’t have a bad attitude, they care passionately about the game and the community. It just doesn’t seem like they do because people don’t understand the process. It’s vague and complex.

An 80$ game is very good value for money even if you only play it for 50 hours. I’m sure you have played more. So it’s not really wasted.

You don’t need to tell me you are disabled. I won’t think of you any other way. I’m sure you don’t want me to be sympathetic either because most people are and that might not be the right way to handle things.

I don’t want us to get on the wrong side of eachother. I don’t want us to have a big argument. I’m trying to sway you in the fact you are looking at game development all wrong. I have been in education for multi-profession game development for 3 years and have been studying it for even longer. You don’t want to hate Bungie in what they are doing so I am giving you some insight on why they might actually be doing the right thing. Besides, It wasn’t Bungie’s idea to cut content from the game. The Publisher wanted to extend the game’s DLC content, that’s why there are moving it to DLC.

Jason David Anderson

I’m getting tired of replying to anyone who disagrees with me in entire essay long posts.

I did Unix Database Programming using Solaris and SQL, as well as QA for a company called ToneSoft for several years – we created software that ran complex PBX phone systems.

I’m very familiar with programming, it’s another reason I’m pissed at Bungie.

They’re allocating time to things that aren’t broken, instead of fixing things that are broken.

Simple as that, and I’ll leave it at that.

If me voicing my displeasure with the company gets you so wriled up that you have to write an entire essay about it – that’s your prerogative – I’m not going to continue replying to them, as this is the 6th one I’ve seen today. (all have different points and arguments they make, so apparently nobody is right)

Allen Abrams

Bahahahahaha – he’s a real bastard, eh?

BuckshotGeorge

I’m on the fence with this. I have completed Raid both with and without the push, although I will admit that it’s been more push than other (mainly because I get invited into teams at the last part).
It’s more the attitude in which Bungie have introduced it. Deej’s comments especially have me annoyed. The whole “it’s our game, and you are playing it in a way that we did not want” is really starting to wear thin. Yes, you made the game and I have no doubt you put everything you could into making it great, but as soon as it went on sale it became public property. This is now OUR game and, providing what we do doesn’t break the game, we should be able to play it however the hell we want. Where is the choice? If you want to push Atheon, push him. If you don’t, don’t. Doesn’t get much simpler than that.
Being on the fence (although my last paragraph would make it seem otherwise) I don’t think this particular update will matter a great deal. Defeating Atheon is not particularly difficult. It doesn’t matter who goes into the teleport, someone grab the relic, someone shoot those red balls above you. Those outside open the portal, avoid supplicants.
Lastly, I read an article this morning about Bungie spending too much time and effort correcting things that don’t really matter, instead of implementing improvements that would benefit the game. For example, nobody benefits from removing the Atheon push. People who did the push now can’t. Those that didn’t do it anyway are not affected. But what about actual improvements, being pro-active instead of reactive, sorting things that will actually benefit the people playing (gun buffs to exotics, actual meaningful content).
There are loads of people quitting Destiny, or at least stating they will, and with massive games just around the corner (Advanced Warfare, Master Chief Collection) ready to take more players away, Bungie need to start doing something really good to keep people around, and draw in a new crowd.
I am invested in Destiny. I have played over 200 hours so far and love it. I will stay until the first two expansions at least, but something spectacular really has to come along to convince everyone else it’s worth their while. Making changes to the endgame that don’t actually benefit anyone is not spectacular.

I have to disagree completely that it’s public property. It is definitely NOT public property. It’s their game, you’re buying a license to utilize and play it based on their rules and expectations of play (heard of a EULA?). Who is the atheon push hurting? Me. Other honest players who play the boss the way it was intended to be. Can’t beat it without an exploit? Tough cookie, you don’t deserve the spoils of the fight then. Why are people complaining about this update??? Ridiculous.

BuckshotGeorge

OK, firstly I’ll concede the point about the game being public property. While technically it is not public property it is the public that have paid for this licence and should have at least a say in which the game is played. So in spirit it is the public’s property, although I agree with you that it actually isn’t.
Secondly, my main point was not the change itself but the way in which this, and other changes have been implemented. Some of the language used in posts we receive really have a condescending feel about them.
Thirdly, people pushing the boss doesn’t hurt you. It doesn’t affect how you perform or how you play the game. People getting loot by pushing Atheon does not hurt you or your gaming experience. If anything it gives you the false sense of entitlement that you are better than someone just because you employ an “honest” method. Something which most guys like yourself seem to enjoy. Did you complete the raid without the help of a guide? Have you completed every Nightfall legitimately without using a cheese method or guide? Then, if you want to nitpick, you aren’t playing the game honestly either. Or at least playing as Bungie intended.
Lastly, people can complain about something they don’t like. You might not like the fact they complain, but having paid out money for something they have the right to complain. Like I have said, my complaint wasn’t essentially about the update itself. It was about its delivery and the fact that there are much more pressing improvements to the game that could be made than the fixes they are putting through (a point which you clearly missed in your haste to complain about people complaining). Can you honestly say that the Atheon push is the most important thing that needed fixing or improved?

Weston Millar

On hard mode, you can’t gear your character to be able to handle supplicants, oracle room adds, oracles, and deal boss damage effectively and efficiently all at the same time. My issue isn’t with how it’ll mess with making the raid harder, I’m questioning how the constraints provided by hard mode will make it feasible in a reasonable timeframe. Enrage is a heluva thing, and with everyone equipping gear and building characters in an effort to cover the bases of every job, it’ll be harder than usual to whittle Atheon down in time since nobody is specialized for anything.

Jason David Anderson

Dear Microsoft:

I don’t really like your company, I haven’t for a while – and I refused to buy an XBox One for the longest time because of it.

But there is something you did right.

Thank you for letting Bungie take all the time they needed to complete their games.

Destiny has shown me what this company is capable of when a deadline is held to – and I have to say it’s like seeing some one you idolize drunk and covered in their own puke – the disappointment makes me genuinely sad.

Thank you for setting up a sale that lets me get an XBox One for $250 at the beginning of the month.

Being able to revisit the Halo world and play through everything at once will help me remember why I liked Bungie.

Bungie – I don’t know what to say – your game is beyond half assed. I want to love it, I have dumped more time into it than any game in recent memory – almost 15 days of total play time combined. I have unlocked almost every exotic – I’ve gotten every single sub class and main class for every single type of class you can be.

This Atheon “fix” really rubs me the wrong way – and I refuse to relearn a fight that I’ve already got down pat, just so you can artificially lengthen out your game.

I don’t know if I should blame you or Activision for how this game turned out at release – and I’ll probably come back for the DLC – but damn you let me down, you let me down so big.

I’m sure all the replies to this post will be full of negativity, as the original post is – I guess that’s fine, too. Just know that I really wanted to love Destiny, but in the end – after all was said and done – I am leaving it feeling like I was cheated from what could have been something marvelous, and I do not hold high hopes that the DLC content will fix everything that’s wrong.

Is it really necessary to belittle some one for putting forth an opinion?

Lezlow

Haters gonna hate.

Jason David Anderson

If you’re talking to me, I have over 15 days of total time played put into the game. I don’t hate the game – I really want the game to succeed.

I am let down, and mad with Bungie in how they’re treating the game.

It could be so much more than it is, and I feel that Bungie is going in the wrong direction with it in how they’re patching things.

I also feel like the game was either dumbed down, or cut up for DLC. It needed about 20 strikes and 3 raids to be a fufilling experience, and a lot more story than what it’s got.

Raxs

If you complain about something it’s supposed to be because you are trying to get something fixed as a result. If you just complain for the sake of complaining it just makes you look whinny. Don’t bother. It just seems ridiculous and a waste of your own time :/

Jason David Anderson

I don’t see it as a waste of my time, and I already stated in my OP that it was negative complaints.

It’s obvious Bungie give two shits about what the community think or they wouldn’t have put the Atheon patch through – an overwhelming number of people asked them not to do it, so what’s the point in trying to get things changed?

Lezlow

Just because the only posts you see are the ones complaining. Everyone else is enjoying the game for what it is. You are ALWAYS going to have, what seems like, more complaints because people rarely go to forums to praise. They go to complain.

Jason David Anderson

I don’t only see posts that are complaints – quit treating me like I’m a child, I’m a 33 year old man.

No matter how you slice it, thousands of people complained about the announcement of the Atheon patch, and Bungie ignored them.

No matter how you slice it, Bungie had 9 years to make a game and this is what they delivered – bland story, bug ridden, lacking in content.

No matter how you slice it, Bungie have chosen to ignore game breaking bugs and glitches to fix things that aren’t broken, time and time again.

I want to like this game, I’ve probably put more time into this game than you – and I’ve probably unlocked more content overall than you – my opinion still remains the say, Bungie really fucked this up, and the way they’re handling the fuck up points towards them not doing anything to fix the real problems anytime soon.

Master Ask

Asfar as being mad about the patch, ya we can nolonger cheat our way through the last boss. Bungie designed the raid to be hard. I have got almost every piece of gear the raid has through the exploits. I want them patched. I play as a titan I hate sitting around waiting on the warlock to get the win. The way the raid was meant to be played is not hard. Everyone on your team needs to know how to use the relic, its fun. Once you learn all of the mechanics it isnt too hard. Random teleports meh! Smash ads with the relic or shoot oricles. the learning curve is not to steep.

Jason David Anderson

I am not bitching about the exploit – exploits should be fixed.

I’m bitching about the random teleport decision.

I’m bitching about the decision to make it so we cannot jump onto ledges where hobgoblins spawn into and can snipe us from.

The raid was fine, it was balanced.

An interesting post I found on Reddit in regards to this – that sums up how I feel a lot better than I can, apparently:

“Former raid designer on World of Warcraft here. Bungie’s approach to Atheon is different than how we handled live tuning of a boss encounter.

Once raid content has been cleared, any buff to difficulty through tuning or a redesign of mechanics will confuse and frustrate your player base. The players already overcame your challenge, regardless of your original intent. Serious bugs and exploits should be fixed quickly, but difficulty should never go up. As a designer it was your job to get the tuning right and to identify the viable strategies before the content was released. If you failed at accomplishing that, take note, and learn for next time.

That said, random selection for the teleport is objectively less interesting design than the original targeting mechanic. Annoying your customer base to implement a less interesting design seems unlikely to pay off.”

sycoteck

well then someone’s wrong then. the game worked perfectly if u logged as many hours as u say you did, no one eats a shit sandwich and gets to the last bite and says “I didn’t like any of that”.

Jason David Anderson

DirtyBlackSocks on the PS4 – you can look up my characters and do the math yourself.

Recent patches have left me sore at the game – I didn’t think it was THAT bad to begin with, I had confidence that the bugs and glitches would be patched – instead they are ignored and things that have nothing wrong are patched.

There’s not much else to be said about it. Bungie have single handedly taken the joy out of the raid content of this game for me, personally, and I’m bitching about it.

Obviously I liked, and like the game, if I’ve put that many hours into it – that does not mean I’m not allowed to disagree with changes made after I’ve put that time in.

Every patch they’ve made has had some aspect to it that’s had a negative effect to the overall freedom players can have in Destiny. Flat out, there’s no debating that.

sycoteck

free to cheat

Raxs

What difference does that make? Your comments about random complaining are just a sought for attention. Don’t be an exhibitionalist, because that is exactly what you are acting like. If you have a genuine complaint, report it to Bungie.

What? Do you think we should get rid of the law for using your cell phone while driving? Just because most people think it’s stupid you think we should? Let’s let people keep guns too. They want to do it, let’s let them do what they want. No. Most people are lazy or ignorant. Bungie spent 8 years making this game, they don’t want to see people exploiting it and taking away the entire aspect of “effort”. I did the vault of glass on hard yesterday. 3 guys just told my 3 friends to sit at the back of the room and kill floating red oracles when I see them. We did it in less than 5 minuets. It was so underwhelming and I certainly didn’t feel like I earned the exotics I got from it. I see why they want to patch it. It’s not playing the game properly. When a game is that exploitable it should be fixed, especially if it is supposed to be the hardest thing to do in the game. I can’t find anyone that wants to do it legit, so it’s ruining the game for me and everyone else who wants to play it properly.

Jason David Anderson

Trying to compare some one complaining on an internet forum about changes to a video game, to state level laws, is about as dumb as you can get.

I won’t even dignify it with a further response – I am not going down this road. If you want to stay on topic, we can stay on topic – but keep the ad hominem attacks out of it, and do not try to divert into hot topics in public affairs.

Raxs

We can leave snide remarks out of this. If we are going to disagree with something we can do it maturely or I’ll go.

I’m not doing a reference here, it has nothing to do with these ad hominem attacks. I’m just saying people shouldn’t just do stuff because the the masses demand it, because the masses don’t always know what’s best.

You should also remember, the Vault of Glass is not a very refined piece. We’re talking about 6 people in Bungie. They have 0 experience in raids and only really did it to have some fun with the way the game could be played. They quote: “It’s an experiment.” Nobody is saying it’s great or even good. They wanted to see if it worked and I must say for a first time, It’s better than most Raids I’ve ever seen.

If some people, even those in such prestigious roles as WOW raid developers, honestly think having 3 people sitting at the back of a room is an “interesting” mechanic I simply must disagree and must question their expertise. It just breaks up the team instead of making it a joined experience, any 3 idiots can just sit there and shoot oracles when they pop up, I did the whole thing without even using my Mic the first time round, there wan’t even a need to communicate. If you are not swayed then fine. We don’t need to argue about that. We are divided by opinions, as much as I want to believe this old glitch mechanic is better, I simply can’t. Sorry about that, if you think it was so, I won’t stand against that.

Jason David Anderson

Honestly if Bungie had this as a mechanic from the get go I wouldn’t care.

I do not agree in changing the mechanics of a raid after it has been on farm for the majority of people attempting it for so long.

They made mistakes? Fine, fix it in the next raid, be more dilligent.

I will not sit around for another 2-3 hours in an Atheon fight after already learning the fight once, period. I think a lot of players feel that way – and I think Bungie are doing more to hurt themselves than anything with their hard headed decisions.

If an overwhelming part of your consumer base says don’t do it – then don’t do it. It’s really that simple.

They especially should not lie about it, saying that this was the intended mechanic from the start assumes we are ignorant. People with a lot more knowledge than I in programming and game development have come forward and stated that having Atheon teleport 3 people furthest away is something that has to be specifically put into the code.

Even worse people have come forward to say that changing the code to make it random would take no more than an hour to do – so I’m left wondering what Bungie have been focusing on in regards to fixes with real issues in the meantime.

There are legitimate bugs in this game, even in the Atheon fight, that should have been addressed long before changing the mechanics of the fight itself.

Maybe I’m not being clear enough in where my anger is placed – maybe I am. I do not know what’s so hard to understand about being upset that Bungie are obviously being deceitful in their statements, focusing on things that are not as important as other things, and hurting their own community.

At the end of the day I can get just as much stuff off of the Templar as I can off Atheon – so what is the point in doing him anymore if I’ve already got the raid helmet and the mythoclast?

How many people do you think feel the same way? Even if I’m in the minority of people who feel that way, isn’t it still something that Bungie shouldn’t be doing – since the minority already play the raid content, even less are now going to be playing Atheon.

Raxs

In short Bungie messed up. They had 6 people working on a raid that never had worked on a raid before. It was just an experiment to them so they will apply the knowledge they learned in the Next DLC. They made a mistake and they tried to fix said mistake with what most people consider another one. They are just learning from the experience, that’s all they really wanted. I’m glad they made these mistakes early on because now they can learn from it and apply it later. It’s just a hard lesson learned on the Raid team.

Jason David Anderson

Thanks to their decision I no longer have a raid team.

It’s honestly one of the better raid teams Iv’e ever been a part of, too – we joked around and had fun, it was never serious.

All of us are military or ex military, and the core members of the group who are still active simply do not have the time to relearn the raid – they’ve moved on to other games.

Bungie are alienating their user base, it’s like…rule number one in gaming – or as a company for that matter, listen to your customers.

Seriously, how many people begged with Bungie not to do this? Why does DeeJ have to bring the concerns to the developers? As developers wouldn’t they want to be directly in touch with the people they’re developing for, or at least not so out of touch that DeeJ has to bring them concerns from their userbase?

Part of me is in shock at how unpofessional Bungie is handling this game, the other part of me doesn’t want to believe it.

Overall I am extremely disappointed – I’ve never been this disappointed with a game developer before, I normally don’t invest this kind of emotional capacity into a game developer – but I loved Bungie, they were my favorite creator – and this game has made me seriously question whether they are capable of doing something on the same scale as Halo.

When I actually looked into it, and realized that only 20 members of the original team are still working with Bungie – I kind of realized why they seem to alien to me now, they simply are not the same team they were.

Raxs

I can see why you’d be upset, but people should expect this to happen because Bungie didn’t know what they were doing. They didn’t know the first thing about making a raid and even said it was only an experiment. They aren’t being unprofessional, they just aren’t experienced with making raids in the slightest.

The Raid glitch was not what they wanted in the game, they could have left it in had they not been informed it was ruining the experience for players that didn’t just want to be used as tools by higher ranked people and actually wanted to be part of a team. That was always my experience. I was never able to have fun with the raid and even contribute because I always had the short straw and had to sit in the corner and do nothing for the whole boss fight, which is supposed to be the climax of the whole event.. At least now I can be part of an actual team.

And yep, a big chunk of Bungie left to work with 343 on halo. That happened quite a while back.

It’s a shame that events have not be stacked in your favour. A lot of people have benefited from this change, but also some people haven’t. It just, sadly, comes to show everyone can’t be pleased :/

Jason David Anderson

Wait, what?

People should expect to be disappointed when playing a game and forgive it because the developer doesn’t know what they’re doing?

That makes zero sense.

Raxs

What I mean is that people expect perfection from a six man team of people that have never done that before. So it’s no wonder they are disappointed. I’ll be honest, when I heard six inexperience raid developers were working on something just for an experiment, I expected very, very little. I thought it would just be like the usual story missions, just harder with another big boss at the end like any mission they’ve done before, just less interesting and more difficult. I was very surprised at how intricate the end result was from 6 people that were just playing around with the different cards. I’m very surprised anyone expected anything from this raid asides from the amateur work of six guys in a sandpit. The raid was pretty imperfect, but it seems to me like a much higher standard piece of work that could be logically expected from a team of raid amateurs. That was just my assumption.

mR Disqus

So basically because I only have 1 other player on my friends list thats even remotely interested in playing and has a high enough level to participate in the Raid I should never expect to reach maximum level because I’ll never get into a group of 6 that would be willing to spend the time to help me learn the ins-and-outs of what it takes to complete the raid… on top of that I can continue to run my 3 level 29 toons through the SAME missions/bounties/strikes I’ve been playing for months. Man, what a great game!

I’d also like to thank Bungie for telling me how the game is supposed to be played. Should I do the weekly nightfall strike alone or in a group? Also, I have void rocket launchers, should I user fire instead since its already a very easy strike? I mean, beating it in 20 minutes couldnt have been the way you intended on this weeks nightfall strike to have been completed right?

Or, maybe the 3+ hours a night I spend running between buildings 3, 5, and 7 on Mars collecting chest, killing mobs, farming Relic is what you intended on me doing EVERY F’N night? Because that once an hour public event that I get to do myself sure wakes me up.

BUNGIE? Please, what do I do, I need you to tell me. I mean, I paid $65 for your game, I play it to my enjoyment but I know that’s not the way YOU intended the game to be played so please TELL ME how to have fun

Lezlow

I mean I am not going to say that the game isn’t repetitive but the raid is super easy to learn even if you get people from town. Beat it on normal and then try hard. To be honest this update does nothing except to the people who don’t know how to beat him legit and have been cheesing him off the cliff. 3 randoms or 3 in the back makes little difference.

John Winklepleck

Thank you if u have a good team it wont matter if its random……

John Winklepleck

Ok its still like any mmo styled game farming and grinding is a constant thing……and do what I did to do the raid….join a clan…..my 0 friends that play has bumped up to 20……now I have only done the raid once because I work 40+ hours a week and inly play fir a few hours at a time but I still find the time to enjoy this game…

Raxs

Destiny is an FPS. It has a campaign, multiplayer and more than one Coop activity. That is already MORE than all other FPS games offer. This is not an MMO. You can’t expect this to have as much to do in it as WOW or Runescape. This game already has a lot more to do in it than every other FPS. Go play Halo for a bit. The only thing you get from it is cosmetic armour, which you just have to grind multiplayer for. Is that really any different? In Halo, you have a 6 hour campaign then a few spartan ops missions (A lot of which are recycled) and then just multiplayer. In destiny there are hundreds of things to unlock, loads of activities, if you find yourself finishing all of them, that’s it, you’ve done all of the games content and am now at “ENDGAME”, you now have the choice to leave and wait for more content in the DLCs or just play the same multiplayer and missions over and over, just like every other game.

People expect more from Destiny. Why? It’s hardly any different from any other game. You think just because you hyped about it deserve more? That’s your fault for thinking unrealistically about an FPS game. I’m sorry to hear you are bored of the game, but that is usually the cue to just stop playing. The moment you get bored, just quit, that’s the point. You owe nothing to the game and the game owes you nothing, so you may as well just quit. That would be the only logical thing to do.

delta 6655

the push needed to be changed i admit, thats to easy a bug to exploit, but the teleport thing is something that, had the game been tested, wouldent have been there to begin with. when you sell a game, you cant change the rules like that unless thats what the community wants. bungie really doesent care what we think of there game, becouse in there perspective, we are playing on something that belongs to them, and they will change it as they see fit. i like the idea of random teleporting… on hard mode, where every member should know what they are doing. but on the lower dificulty mode. it should be the set teleport, so every member can experence the teleport when they understand whats going on. the vault is a hectic place. and teamwork (which is a big part of the vault in every part up till this point) should not be thrown out the window. teamwork should be rewarded. now, if they made it where you were gurentyed to get a physical item at the end, (weapon, armor etc.) i wouldent be as mad, becouse then the higher difficulty would be warented. becouse the reward would be worth it.

what i think would make the vault harder but more fun and enhance teamwork would be if you made the middle island dureing the atheon battle the teleporter. so a team could do the vault with compleate cordenation. so teams could really stragitize and feel the fruits of the labers be harvested. the vault should be fun, and not “oh crap, i got teleported, what do i do, what do i do” it should be. “ok, thees guys are gonna be teleported, while they are in there, let me explain how this works, so if you wanna try, you can.”

come on bungie. i expected better from you

Tyler Dixon

I’m tired of seeing cry babies. Play the game the way it’s supposed to be played. Awwww you can’t cheat and push Atheon off. And if you can’t stay outside or go in to the oracle phase your bad and shouldn’t be doing the vault yet. You knew it was coming they gave you plenty of time to learn everything you needed to before the patch

Tyler Dixon

And on easy it’s easy even with noobs. I could damn near solo Atheon with 3 noobs being dead. Learn strategies adapt and quit crying

Ori Margalit

WOW… I so wish I was you, your amazing.

Have you always been an ass? Bet you bitch about everything else don’t you. Are you 5… ?

Exactly how is the game to get better if everyone was a Bungie tool like yourself?

Let people vent without your judgment OK freak.

Raxs

So mature.

Jason David Anderson

What’s your Gametag and what console do you play on? I’m going to find 3 people who have never done the Vault of Glass and hold you to your word.

You’re full of shit – the Gatekeeper and Atheon are the hardest fights in the raid, and even on Normal they require people to work together. You can’t just solo Atheon, not without cheesing him/exploiting him.

Learn to articulate yourself better instead of lashing out like a 12 year old with an ego – and people will take you seriously.

Jason David Anderson

You realize people are complaining about Atheon’s random teleport ability, and not the exploit of pushing him off the edge, right? Nobody is stupid enough to bad mouth a company for fixing an exploit, but when you take a raid mechanic that was obviously working as intended, and say it’s a glitch – then change it 2 months into the game (and one month away from when this raid will be defunct and old news) people are going to have issues with it.

I’ve already put my time into learning these fights – I should be able to beat the entire raid in under 2 hours – I should not have to sit around at a final boss with my friends, for a second time, and spend 3 – 6 hours wiping because we have to learn an entirely new mechanic.

With regards to the Oracle platform – honestly who cares? Bungie said this is an open world game “If you can see it you can go there.” were their words. So if the designer was dumb enough to make little ledges that let us jump up to where enemies cannot – why should we not be allowed to go there?

If Hobgoblins are able to spawn in and snipe us from a ledge, why can we not go there and snipe the boss?

It makes no sense, and it kills the open world feel of the game – having random “Turn Back” signs pop up that make my controller rumble are moronic.

Personally I’m done playing Destiny until the DLC – I’ve sunk enough of my time into it.

More to the point, I think a lot of people will just flat out ignore Atheon from here on out.

No matter how you slice it, Bungie are alienating their community by not listening to what we have to say.

I used to think DeeJ was all about the community and really did care what we have to say – now it’s completely obvious he’s a PR douchebag who’s job it is to manage damage control.

So it’s really whatever, it’s their game, they can do what they want – but I paid for it, and I can voice my disappointment in it as much as I want, just as I can choose to stop playing it.

I know for a fact Bungie’s recent decisions with the patches – where they choose to change mechanics and ignore real bugs/glitches that break the game – has caused them to lose at least one raid group for the weekly content, and I’d venture to say it’s cost them a lot more.

At the end of the day less than 30% of the total Destiny community play the raid content – so why are they putting so much effort into it when there are way more important things going on?

Because they want to feed their own ego’s and feel better about the shit job they did.

It should piss you off, because it’s a direct insult to you – they’re saying that your voice doesn’t matter.

Anyone who is truly complaining is just terrible at the game. Enough said.

Jason David Anderson

What’s your gamertag, please? I’d like to check your stats to see how good you are.

BuckshotGeorge

Incorrect. I’m a level 30 player who has completed many raids/nghtfalls both employing ways that Bungie want us/are forcing us to play, and by cheesing it. A sweeping statement doesn’t make for a compelling argument. It just makes you look like a narrow-minded prick.

for all the people bitching about the raid being hard you have never played other games like Diablo/WoW where the point of making it so hard is when you come out of it with a vex mythoclast of a Exotic weapon or raid gear and people see you they are like “wow thats sick how did you get it/do it” its more so the sense of accomplishment but right now if I see people with gear I am thinking that it wasnt hard (I have 3 29s) and for the people bitching about finding other people either make friends (oh no) or post on websites like destinyteamfinder.com or destinytracker.com I always see roughly about 1000 people on the second website and about 200 on the first website so it really isnt that hard if you try

Raxs

This update seemed to create more connection issues than it fixed :/ The Jackolytes don’t work for me either. This update staggered the game for me a bit. I hope they fix it soon.

AlecJ

Wow. I dont know what they did to other guns but now the Crucible is ALL shotguns. Literally, 50-75% of the players in any particular match, are just running around with their shotgun out, not even trying to use anything else. Whatever they did, it didnt work.

I really have tried to avoid doing it myself, but you dont have a chance otherwise. Shotgun it is…..until they nerf them at least.

Raxs

I noticed that too :/ I gave up on crucible today because shotgun users have seemed overly abundant recently. Shotgun ammo needs to be way more scarce. Spawning with a fully loaded shotgun is pretty ridiculous.

Jason David Anderson

Funny how prior to today’s patch I could connect to Destiny just fine and now I’m getting error codes left and right, I can’t even complete a farm route without a d/c. LOL. All I want to do is finish the Nightfall and Weekly – fuck this. Bungie, everything you touch turns to shit.

Lezlow

Its probably because people are requesting Bungie to single you out so you rage quit so we dont have to hear you moan about things you know nothing about.

Jason David Anderson

Holy shit dude, you’ve literally started to devolve into ad hominem insults because you cannot maintain a coherent argument to save your life.

You say that I shouldn’t play a game if I don’t like it – but you’re hopping onto a WEB PAGE to track down and insult a singular person because you don’t agree with them?

Please, just leave me alone. There’s an ignore feature on here – if you don’t like what I have to say, then don’t listen to it, but do not demean yourself by following me around throwing around hissy fit, childish insults that add nothing to the overall discussion.

It’s already painfully obvious you’re a liar (you aren’t around code all day, you don’t program), don’t become a liar and an internet tough guy.

Anthony Perez

How about that Monkey error code?

Cameron Thompson

MONKEY!!!!!!

sycoteck

ever since the update i cant play destiny, i keep getting error code: (wasp) can anybody help?